The Vegetarian Resource Group 2015 scholarship winner Chloe Falkenheim reported on her first semester in college.

“The first semester of college has gone very well! My courses are Environmental Studies, Principles of Economics, and Humans and Other Animals (a first-year seminar). I have been doing well in school and have written many papers in my seminar advocating for vegetarian diets.

I am in a vegetarian and mostly vegan food co-op, an organization where students share responsibility in cooking and cleaning meals. I am working with a group on campus called Real Food Oberlin, an organization committed to increasing Oberlin’s percentage of sustainable, healthy, humane, fair food purchased. The Oberlin campus is not very aware of food-related issues, so I came up with the idea to hold events in all the freshman dorms to educate students. I met with dining services, Residential Education, and the freshman RAs to organize these events. In the events, we gave out local apples and crackers and Hampton Creek’s Just Cookies (completely vegan cookies) and gave 15-minute workshops on food justice. 48 students went through our workshops the first weekend we held them in the first freshman dorm. We are holding another event this weekend in another dorm. I am also working with Hampton Creek to replace many products in the Oberlin dining hall with their products.

Oberlin has a winter term during the month of January where students can work on whatever project they choose. This winter term I will be interning at an company called Vaute Couture, which makes vegan and eco-friendly clothing. Through VegYouth, we held an online chat to help teens with activism and have had approximately 15 new members join the alliance.”

Congratulations to Chloe for winning a Vegetarian Resource Group scholarship and continuing her activism.

Deadline for the 2016 college scholarships for current high school seniors is
February 20, 2016. See details on applying at: http://www.vrg.org/student/scholar.htm

To support VRG scholarships or internships, you can donate at: www.vrg.org/donate